REMINISCENCES OF BLAKE
besides that on wh. he sat. On my putting my hand to it, I found that it would have fallen to pieces if I had lifted it. So, as if I had been a Sybarite, I said with a smile, 'Will you let me indulge myself?' And I sat on the bed and near him. And during my short stay there was nothing in him that betrayed that he was aware of what to other persons might have been even offensive, not in his person, but in all about him.
His wife I saw at this time, & she seemed to be the very woman to make him happy. She had been formed by him. Indeed otherwise she cd. not have lived with him. Notwithstanding her dress, wh. was poor & dirty, she had a good expression in her countenance—& with a dark eye, had remains of beauty in her youth. She had that virtue of virtues in a wife, an implicit reverence of her husband. It is quite certain that she believed in all his visions, & on one occasion, not this day, speaking of his visions she said, 'You know dear, the first time you saw God was when you were 4 years old. And he put his head to the window & set you ascreaming.' In a word, she was formed on the Miltonic model, & like the first wife, Eve, worshipped God in her husband, he being to her what God was to him. Vide Milton's Par. Lost, passim.
He was making designs or engraving, I forget which—Cary's Dante was before [him]. He shewed me some of his designs from Dante of which I do not presume to speak. They were too much above me. But Götzenberger, whom I afterwds. took to see them expressed the highest admiration of them. They are in the hands of Linnell, the painter, & it has been suggested, are reserved by him for publication when Blake may have become an object of interest to a greater number than he can be at this age[1] . . .
- ↑ [See ante, pp. 8-9.]
22
